LONDON – As he looks ahead to CES 2017, GroupM Chairman Irwin Gotlieb sees “enormous developments” in all six categories that are typically his focus at the global consumer electronics and technology trade show. In an interview with Beet.tv, Gotlieb identifies those categories as automotive, computing, computing mobility, consumer electronics, health & fitness and integration.

On the consumer electronics side, “I say this every year but it has never been more true than it is today. TV’s are getting bigger, better, cheaper and the pace at which that trend continues to go is escalating,” Gotlieb says.

While consumers will see “step change” as the trend plays out, Gotlieb notes that people on both the content side and manufacturing side are thinking even bigger. This group is “contemplating what an apartment of the future might look like and how it would need to be configured to have a video wall,” he says.

Among other things, such contemplation raises questions like “Do you do virtual reality with a helmet on your head, or do you do virtual reality with a 200-inch screen that represents an entire wall in your living room,” Gotlieb says.

Moreover, “What about a screen of that size with almost infinite resolution and autostereoscopy, which means 3D without glasses and what are the implications of those capabilities,” particularly for marketers, he adds.

In the computing space, Gotlieb observes that “mobility and computing have intersected with each other. Today we talk about not just the CPU but the GPU.”

He goes on to marvel at the rapid progress of NVIDIA processors, whose initial application facilitated the rendering of graphics in real time before being used in autonomous vehicles.

“And sure enough, last year NVIDIA moved to the automotive floor from the consumer electronics floor” at CES, Gotlieb recalls.

As for integration and the internet of things, he believes there will be increased emphasis this year on the risks involved, given that hackers have been able to infiltrate some IOT devices.

“We need to be very careful about how we develop the internet of things so that we can continue to secure our identities and our lives,” Gotlieb says. “But it’s going to be an exciting show, as always.”

This interview is part of our series “The Road to CES,” a lead-up series in advance of CES 2017. The series is presented by FreeWheel. Please find more vidoes from the series here.

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